I got a great piece of advice a few months back from Mike Dillard about keeping all negativity out of our lives. It’s some of the greatest advice I’ve gotten and has since saved me tons of time and even more aggravation and second-guessing. Here’s why we can’t let people suck the positivity out of us…

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Your partner in success,
Ryan McMullen

I know what you’re thinking, “Thanks genius, and the Pope is Catholic; tell me something I didn’t know.” I think we can all agree that Oprah knows how to market, but I didn’t know the level of her system until this morning.

So, my lovely bride, Kendra and I were talking this morning over breakfast like a good family and we started talking about how Oprah is probably the greatest marketer today. We’ve all heard stories of obscure products going on her show and that appearance exploding their businesses.

When you really analyze what she is doing, it is the exact same principle that we as online marketers use. It’s pretty awesome and she has a well-oiled machine working 24/7. Whether or not you like her (I personally think she’s very entertaining), you cannot deny how great of a marketer she is.

Here’s an example of what Kendra experienced. A few months back, Kendra bought something through oprah.com that she had seen on her show. I don’t know what it was; probably something none of us could live without like candles that align our chacras through the power of lavender. Who knows?

In any event, as part of the ordering process, Kendra naturally gave her name and email address. At that point, she was on Oprah’s “list” and can be sold anything at the touch of a button.

Here’s what Oprah did: She sent out a mass email to her list about the dangers of talking on your phone while driving. If you haven’t seen the show in awhile, this is Oprah’s latest push. It’s great to make people aware of it and watch how she capitalizes on it.

So, Kendra got the email from Oprah asking her to sign a pledge that she will not drive and talk on her phone. Okay, great, now what? Once Kendra “signed” the pledge and submitted it, she was immediately taken to Oprah’s sales page with a video of Oprah saying, “Thank you so much for this… Oh, by the way, to show your support, you should buy this keychain, bumper sticker, etc.”

Genius! I’m guessing the proceeds for those products probably go to charity, but how awesome is that? She drives you to her website, offers you valuable content 80% of the time and then sells you targeted products the other 20%.

Kendra was around the 200,000 person to sign the pledge, so can you imagine how big Oprah’s list is? I’m sure it’s well over a million. That means that she can craft ONE email, send it to her list and easily make millions of dollars in a single day off of that alone! You don’t become the world’s first female billionaire by not knowing the system.

This is why it’s so important for us to build our own lists and really connect with it. I jokingly refer to it as, “Making sweet love to your list”, but that is really what you have to do. Obviously, Oprah has the benefit of a TV show to help build relationships, but we can do the same thing by constantly offering value to the folks on our list.

Please leave me a comment and let me know who you think will be the first online marketing billionaire.

Your partner in success,

Ryan McMullen

Yes, I know you’re thinking that Ryan has lost his mind. But, bear with me for a minute. I talk to tons of network marketers everyday who have spent substantial money on training and I want to share with you why most people fail.

Let’s back up for a minute. There is a 97% failure rate in network marketing. Yes, 97%! That is a HUGE percentage. Turn that around and it means that only 3% of people will make this their living. Sounds terrible, right?

BUT, let’s take a closer look at that 97%. How many of those associates treated it like it was a real business? How many came home from their 40-hr jobs and put in one, two, maybe three hours every night? The answer is not many.

Even further, who talked themselves into believing this was a really easy way to get rich quick?

Who did their homework and aligned themselves with a leader and team who can teach them how to, step-by-step, build a business?

Who got themselves in the mindset to take on a business and all of the effort it entails?

When you add up all those people, you get to 97% pretty quickly. Now, the encouraging part: There is NOTHING extraordinary about the 3% who make it. Anybody can be in that 3%. All you need is a genuine desire to build your business. That’s it!

When you have that desire, nothing is going to stop you; no wall can be put up that you can’t break through; no amount of failure will break your spirit. Once you’ve got that desire, its game over-I’ll see you in the top 3%.

If you take one thing away from this post, it’s to get your mind right. Once you’ve got that desire, you will be light years ahead of most network marketers out there. Then, all you need to do is join a leader with a team who can teach you how to build your business. You’ll be on your way!

Your partner in success,

Ryan

Having a Facebook fan page is an integral part of establishing your own brand and presence within the social networks.

Fan pages were designed for celebrities, bands, businesses, and public figures to promote their brands to the public. Unlike a personal Facebook account where you’re limited to 5,000 friends, there are no limits or restrictions to the number of fans or followers you can have with a fan page. Also, Facebook is starting to crack down on using personal pages for business networking.

Here is a quick video that shows you step by step how to create your own fan page:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I used to wonder why most people online are so willing to offer such valuable advice for free. From a capture page, it’s obviously to get you to opt-in. Every company out there will offer you a sample, but never as valuable as what you can get in this industry. A 10% off coupon at Domino’s? Great, that’s worth a dollar and I already know I like pizza. You can/should literally turn free information into thousands and thousands of dollars.

Here’s an experiment I’d like to conduct:
Take a newbie who has the desire to be successful and only allow him/her to use the free training that comes directly from capture pages. It would take a pretty long time to piece all of the strategies and sources together, but I’m willing to bet that one will be successful just using that information.

Seriously, if you piece together a free boot camp here, a free pdf there and everything else offered for free, you’ve got a pretty solid plan.

This industry is like no other in many respects, but the free exchange of ideas is both baffling and refreshing. Of course, you’ve got people out there that aren’t willing to give away any secrets, belittle people on forums and take, take, take, but for the most part, the community is willing to help each other. It fosters a great working environment.

From a purely business point of view the answer is that the bigger the pie grows, the bigger our portion becomes.

However, it’s more than that. Our business is relationships and once you cultivate them and get to know people, you legitimately want them to succeed. What other industry can offer that?

I have recently endured an online tragedy and I’d like to help everyone else avoid the same pitfall. As the story goes, I wanted to change my domain name because it was RyanMMcMullen.com and that extra “M” was confusing (Michael is my middle name in case you are wondering). A state congressman from Oklahoma has selfishly taken RyanMcMullen.com, so I had to get a little creative. For some time, I’ve preached about proper domain names and had gone against my own personal rule by having the two “M”s side-by-side.

So, I bought my new domain, www.RyanMcMullenOnline.com and was excited to change my blog to reflect the new domain. Like an idiot, I did not back up my database. I changed it through my host and WordPress and lost everything! I know we’ve all had that sinking feeling when you know you just did something terrible. I felt sick, used some colorful language and was ready to throw the computer out the window. That’s how awful it was.

Once I collected myself, I spent roughly 3 hours on the phone with PowerHost and we couldn’t retrieve any of the information. As great as WordPress is, it doesn’t like major changes. Okay, no big deal, I can put together a blog pretty quickly and easily, right? Oh, it gets better. Not only did I not back up my database, but I didn’t save all of my blog posts either. Did I mention what an idiot I was?

I lost most of my content because I naively thought, “Hey, it’s online and the blog is one of the few things I control.” While our blogs cannot be policed or taken down like a FB page, YouTube or Adwords, we’re still at the mercy of the database.

I cannot stress to you enough how important it is to save EVERYTHING. Now, I back up my database regularly and save my posts multiple places. If I can save one person from having to rebuild their blog and content from scratch, this post will have been successful.

Here are directions for your WordPress database:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database

My blog is not quite back to it’s original glory because I have a programmer working on new graphics and it’s missing content, but I did learn a valuable lesson to pass along to everyone: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BACK UP ALL OF YOUR INFORMATION!!!

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About two weeks ago, I was watching the Mizzou football game and I turned to my wife Kendra and asked her, “Would you rather be a professional football player or a professional network marketer?” On the surface, it sounds absolutely ridiculous and there should be no debate. After all, doesn’t everybody want to be a professional athlete?

I’ve actually thought about this in the past and my answer, I’m sure to the dismay of anybody outside of our industry, is a resounding “Network Marketer.” Let me explain by pitting the two against one another in a head to head comparison cleverly entitled, “Pro Jock vs. MLM Jock.”

Fame
This one is actually closer than you think. Yes, even pro jocks who aren’t the superstars still get preferential treatment at the club, everybody flocks to them, guys want to be them and girls want to be with them. But, at what cost? How would you like to have the paparazzi following you everywhere? Every time you go out in public, you have to make yourself respectable and when you buy embarrassing items at the drugstore, everyone knows. Wouldn’t it be a lot cooler to have money and be anonymous? However, if you are looking at just fame, professional athlete is a clear winner.
Advantage: Pro Jock

Earnings
In the media, you constantly hear about how overpaid pro jocks are. But, are they? The average life span of an NFL career is 3.5 seasons and the median salary is $770,000. Simple math tells us that the average NFL player will earn $2.3 million over his entire career. Yes, that’s pretty solid, but most players have been exploited their entire careers, so they have no other marketable skills. If you make it as a network marketer, you can easily achieve a multiple 6 and 7-figure income for as long as you want to work. Let’s say you want to work for 10 years. If you are making $500K when you walk away from the business, you can expect your residual income to afford you at the very least half of that for the rest of your life. So, you will have already earned quite a bit more than the pro jock over your first 10 years, but for the sake of argument, it will take you 9 years of making $250K to equal the earnings of an entire NFL career while you do absolutely NOTHING!
Advantage: MLM Jock

Odds of Success
0.2% of high school football players make it to the pros. 3-5% of Network Marketers make it.
Advantage: MLM Jock

Doubters
When you are a little kid, of course your friends and relatives patronize you and say you can be a professional football player, astronaut, President, whatever. But when it comes down to it, unless you are an obvious superstar, nobody honestly believes you are going pro. In network marketing, most will say you are a sap and are falling for a pyramid scheme. Both jocks are underestimated and have to actually make it to prove themselves to the naysayers.
Advantage: Tie

Time Freedom
You only see the NFL players on Sundays, but they pay their dues behind the scenes. Training camp starts in July and at that point, their job owns them until December. For the most part, they see very little of their families and friends for six months, so they are missing soccer games, recitals, BBQs and all the other social outings that go on during the season. Network marketers make their own schedules. If I want to work at 1am or 1pm, I can. If I want to take a vacation for a month, I can. I choose to go to see the Rams on Sundays, it’s not my job. At this particular moment, I choose to not go see the 0-6 Rams.
Advantage: MLM Jock

Winner: MLM Jock

Of course, not everyone is going to agree with me and you make think I’m full of it, but for me, I would rather do this than be in the NFL. Can you believe that? As a huge sports fan, I never would have guessed those words would have ever come out of my mouth. Who knew?

So, I had a thought today.  Some days, I have good ones and today is one of those days.  This is a little longer than my usual post, but I couldn’t be anymore succinct. 

I started thinking to myself, “Why are the top-producers so successful?”  For the most part, the Jonathan Budds and Mike Dillards of the world have no extensive FORMAL training in marketing or advertising to do what they do.  Then, how on earth can they effectively and efficiently reach so many targeted people.

Budweiser, Coke, McDonald’s and any other big company that comes to mind have marketing budgets in the tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars and hire the top agencies in the world.  Of course they can reach people.  It makes NO sense that a guy like Jonathan Budd can start with nothing and in a very short period of time make 7 figures.  He is playing on the same marketing field as the big boys, so how can he compete? 

After some thoughtful reflection, I had an epiphany and think I figured it out.  I’ll try to explain it to you like I explained it to myself.

First, they don’t teach this stuff in school.  The systems and strategies are that advanced that you’re not going to learn this from a professor in college.  In fact, the technology moves so fast, it’s probably not even feasible for a university to offer these classes because of all the red tape surrounding new class approval.   

The point being that these top Ad, PR and Marketing firms have a pipeline of students from the elite college programs who have never learned the cutting edge techniques.  For the most part, students learn a lot of great theory and science behind human behavior and what is most appealing to us, but not the practical use of the science. 

Second, and the comparison I think is most akin to this is that of a web designer.  The best and most innovative designers in the world are not those who graduated at the top of their class at Harvard, it’s the guys in their basements spending hours and hours of their own time perfecting and inventing new technologies because it’s their passion.

For example, I have a buddy that spent two years in school, got bored and went to program for one of the online poker sites.  By the end of the first year, he was making $20,000 a month.  The knowledge that he used was all self taught. 

Just for the record, I’m not totally anti-higher education.  But for the purposes of this post and to stay on topic, I’ll save that debate for a later date.  What I will say is that from personal experience, I didn’t go to college because I had a passion for Management Information Systems; I went to get that little piece of paper so I could get a “good” job.

The top producers in online marketing are just like the best web designers plugging away until the wee hours of the morning in their parents’ basement because they have a passion and love what they do.  Lucky for the basement dwellers, the world pays a lot of money for that knowledge and you end up with a house on the beach.

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